Words of Replicant Jesus

This is a beautiful looking game, downright gorgeous in some places.  It strikes less of being a game and more of being a cinematic adventure interspersed with scenes of an actual video game.  Overall it works well but there are some things I find disappointing.

The game is currently too linear, you basically just go from zone to zone with no real breaks or towns or chance to involve yourself in side plots.  Valkyria Chronicles has more choice than this game at this juncture.  About 6 hours in perhaps maybe less.  Vanille has a terrible English VA and I expect her Japanese counterpoint is probably squeakier than I have the stomach for.  Hope is just annoying for a variety of reasons; mostly dealing with his mother and being a total douche.  Lightning needs to get punched in the face for blaming Snow for her problems and Snow is kind of wishy washy.  If you are going to introduce a combat system it should be enjoyable at all levels, not just after you “get” everything.  The story thus far is not terribly exciting, but hopefully it gets better.

Things I like.

The game is gorgeous and it’s hard for me to pick out at times the cinematics from the in-game engine.  The character models are well done even if they are annoying.  Combat system looks deep with the Paradigm Shifting.  But so far I have yet to see the full potential.  Musical score is fantastic thus far, and is simply massive.  Character advancement system is similar to Final Fantasy X which I like, though it has the potential to be annoying.  Overall a good game thus far but not what I expected.  Not sure if that is good or bad.

I saw Transformers 2 last Thursday and I will say that I enjoyed the film for what it was.  A Michael Bay explosion fest summer good time movie with luscious Megan Fox doing what she does best.  Looking pretty.  But I have to digress that I did like the film for what it was, a shallow action packed onslaught on the senses that rattles off an explosion any time things get even remotely slow.  Some people seem to think that this is a bad thing and that our childhood heroes/shows are sacred cows that are not to be trifled with.

To them I say nay.

Transformers was never a really deep show, sure it may have touched on nuances of good and evil and sacrifice and heroism but it was a formulaic show about giant robots beating the crap out of other giant robots with a sprinkle of humans in the mix.  The show was designed to sell toys/products to children, mainly boys, and at that it did quite well.  It was and still is a vehicle of commercialism gone rampant and was soon as “rabid” fans accept that the better.  I loved Optimus Prime as a kid and I love him now, he is a great, virtuous, strong, and reliable when the chips are down.  He always does the right thing no matter what and he won’t fail you if he even has a chance of success.  He is the kind of man/person we want to be on our best days.

With that said I still hope that Hollywood finds new ideas to make movies out of, but if the success of this current film is any indicator our “sacred” childhood will become a veritable orchard of ideas for future summer blockbusters to come.  I say just enjoy it and realize that a new generation of fans will be introduced to the things you loved oh so long ago.

Ulduar progression continues unabated for Taurential Reign, just cleared Auriya and Assembly of Iron in Heroic Mode last night.  I maintanked both encounters last night, well on the Assembly I was on Steelbreaker and the interrupt duty on Stormcaller Brundir.  Fairly easy encounter tanking wise for a paladin just remember to dispell the Fusion Punch if you are not GCD locked.  I tended to save a cooldown just for that reducing my threat but hopefully saving myself with a Cleanse.  The other thing to watch out for is to move the boss out of the blue rune/void zone, Rune of Power, so he does not get extra damage output.

The Auriya encounter is all about the pull, the tanking part is relatively simple.  The most dificult part is to make sure she is turned in a direction that is advantageous to the raid after the fear.  If you are fear warded, resist the fear, or break it quickly then this is not an issue and you hould probably just stand there and have the raid run back.  If not just use your judgement and base where you face her on where the majority of the raid is feared to.  Move her as needed away from the void zones and push out as much damage as possible.

As far as Noblegarden is concerned I really hate this holiday, it encourages camping and doing unfun things.  I do like that alot of the items are able to be bought but the camping part and the static nature of the spawns lends the holiday a no-fun feel.  Worse then the Love Fool achievement in my opinion and I hope they rehaul this holiday next year and do soemthing better with it or just make it like it was a one day event with no attachment to the meta-achievement

for the mount.

Easily my least favorite holiday.

I have Shocking both Normal and Heroic but tonight I just sucked it up and failed at tanking Thaddius.  I am not eevn sure why, right at the initial charge I couldn’t tell my left from right.  I am not sure if it is a lack of caring or just one of those nights when the brain is just not on the ball.  Not that it takes alot of brainpower to know your left from your right, but it was a totally brain freeze.  I felt pretty bad too, just pretty ruined the rest of my night in game.  Which sucks because I barely play as it is.  Maybe I just need to play some more and do some heroics to get my bearings again, I feel pretty off in general I am not sure.

The game does not seem fun, which it should so I have to wonder if this is where I cut my losses or just stick it out and get over this temporary malaise.  There was a night where I wouldn’t make mistakes at all but lately I make alot of mistakes dumb ones.  Maybe I just don’t care enough anymore to keep trying.  Or maybe it was just an off night, I am not sure which at this point.  I guess I just wonder if it will get better or just worse.  I don’t like leveling alts, I get bored over time and then I just stop playing them altogether.

Maybe it is time to put up the shield for awhile.  We shall see.

The Toy Race Track and the Lego Blocks.

After reading this post by Keen I decided to make a response to the issue he has raised which I think is fairly interesting.  I am going to tackle each subject on its own terms and then wrap them up at the end with any additional thoughts on either subject matter.  The basic exercise is that you visualize a toy race track and lego blocks and then apply that imagery to the varying facets of an MMO game.  Although I will try to refrain from mentioning any specific MMO and more so focus on the ideas.

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In response to this post.

Players do not like change as much as they clamor for it, as much as they make long diatribes about a more dynamic and changing world with actual consequences; players want a routine and reliability. If they log in to do a quest today they should be able to do the same tomorrow with little if any barriers.

So how do you then create a live event that is primarily player driven and make it fun and interactive. Well I think Blizzard did a very solid job of doing that they took the zombie infestation concept and ran with it; I have some people complain that there should be a quest or an objective for the zombies and I agree perhaps a few PvE objectives may have added some flair but by and large the populace is well aware of what zombies in pop culture do, they eat the flesh of the living, brains, and generally make a mess of things. To their credit the event does this very well, the zombies have created chaos, they have made things very inconvenient at times and probably made some, many players very angry at the changes going on in their world.

But if anything this event is a success, those of us that are playing this game right now will always remember the great zombie invasion of 2008 right before the expansion launched. The chaos that it brought, the fun to be had with zombies, and the frustration of dealing with the fallout; but to date this is the best event they have done for World of Warcraft that was very player driven, even if there are some obvious flaws.

I think that some protection for starting areas should have been made, but in the end this event will not last forever in fact it probably won’t even go on for another week. We are nearing the end of the invasion/plague and soon we can take out our vengeance/frustration on the Scourge and plunge right into the heart of the evil that ails us.

See you in Northrend.

Edit: Looks like the event, the zombies anyway, end today.

Well today is a crappy day for Warhammer Online news; four classes (Choppa, Hammerer, Blackguard, and Knight of the Blazing Sun) and 4 Racial Capitol Cities will not make it into the game; those were just the major changes that were announced by Mark Jacobs.

SOURCE

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Well I decided to get up early to play some Age of Conan for the first time before work, and I find out that my account is canceled and I have been banned from the forums. I go to my Account Subscription, and sure enough it is canceled with no reason given. Pretty much the capstone on what so far looked like a really smooth launch.

I was not an Early Access member so I was really excited to bust out an hour or two of game time… but now I am just frustrated, pissed, and a little alarmed that Funcom would drop the ball like this right on launch day, between the 7 hour downtime, which started as a 4 hour downtime and this debacle, I am really leery of just how good this game could be. It does not help that info is hard to come by since I have been banned from their forums…

Hopefully Funcom fixes this issue quickly.

Edit: Turns out though not verified that this is an intended behavior of their billing system… wow this is both epic and probably the worst level of customer service I have ever seen. I hate to be dramatic but wow this puts a very bad taste in my mouth.  The link may not work since you have to be registered on their forums, which takes an active game account…

From the Funcom forums:

At the moment pre-order accounts, which are not part of the Early Access program or have not yet registered a valid retail-key, are put into frozen status. This is because only Early Access customers and those with a registerd retail-key are actually allowed to play on the servers.

These pre-order accounts are also blocked from accessing the forums as they are only available for customers with currently active game accounts (which right now the pre-order accounts without a valid retail-key are not)

This is actually correct behaviour of the billing system. As soon as the servers have been opened for launch, these customers will have to enter a valid retail-key in order to unfreeze their accounts and get access to the game servers and the forums.

We will open read access to the forums for everybody soon. But it will always be that only customers with valid game accounts will be allowed to write posts and engage in discussions with the community.

Well the new badge loot is out and overall, paladin tank gear seems to be hit and miss, not much avoidance, lots of spell hit, which is okay but really I want actual tanking stats more so then spell hit; so it looks like I will be picking up the Tanking Ring, Chestplate of Stoicism, and Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor.

I am not really sure what else is worth the trouble, especially with my guild so close to starting Tier 6.

Underwhelming to say the least, maybe I just need to compare this to what I currently have but I am not seeing much that really is calling out to me.

I often wonder if this world is screwed up or if I am just screwed up. Cue the recent Mass Effect “Sexbox” debacle and the ensuing balanced and fair discussion on Fox News. It seems once again mass media gets video games completely “right” and that we gamers are ruining the world, can’t tell fiction from reality, and we all want to rape women and murder complete strangers.

Awesome.

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